


The Adventure of the Whole Canon

by marysutherland



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marysutherland/pseuds/marysutherland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My stories for the <a href="http://sherlock60.livejournal.com/">60 for 60</a> challenge - 60 word ficlets for the 60 ACD Sherlock Holmes canon cases.</p><p>Note: given the prejudices of the era, there is a certain amount of racism and sexism expressed by the characters in various of the chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Gloria Scott: Matters of the Heart

The day I gained my profession was that on which I almost killed a man with my deductions. It was generous of Mr Trevor senior to speak with such exaggeration of my ability, when my trifling insights had struck him down almost mortally. His weak heart did not long survive that encounter. Nor did my friendship with his son Victor.


	2. The Musgrave Ritual: A Heart of Stone

I learnt a valuable lesson at Hurlstone. Brunton possessed a first rate intelligence, but his death came at the hands of an excitable Welsh woman of no particular genius. Love is not one of the softer passions – as my boy Watson believes – but as hard and heavy as the flagstone beneath which Rachel Howells abandoned her former beau.


	3. The Gloria Scott: Matters of the Heart

The day I gained my profession was that on which I almost killed a man with my deductions. It was generous of Mr Trevor senior to speak with such exaggeration of my ability, when my trifling insights had struck him down almost mortally. His weak heart did not long survive that encounter. Nor did my friendship with his son Victor.


	4. The Speckled Band: When a Doctor Goes Right

"When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and knowledge" – Sherlock Holmes, _The Speckled Band_

My friend Watson's knowledge is sometimes a little shaky: one might expect a man who has spent time in India to recognise a swamp adder by sight. But there can be no doubt about his nerve. A man who will sit in perfect silence all night in a darkened room awaiting an unknown danger is surely a companion beyond price.  



	5. The Noble Bachelor: The Fourth Continent & Uneasy Lies the Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A two for one this week, since I was inspired by noticing a character cross-over with another ACD story.

**The Fourth Continent**

Watson's extensive knowledge of women extends to Asia, Africa and Europe, but not America. American women invariably attract a certain type of Old World man. Such men note the woman's intelligence, loyalty and spirited nature, but fail to mark certain disadvantages inherent in a female person with her own mind and will. See, for example, Lord St Simon's unfortunate marriage.

**Uneasy Lies the Head**

_Extract from Sherlock Holmes' files:_

Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von Saxe-Meningen, fifth King of Scandinavia  
July 1886: second wife Sophia runs away during honeymoon after receiving anonymous threatening letters. Traced as sent by stepdaughter Clotilde (cf. Schmitt, Helga, Munich 1872).  
King requests case is never to be reported.  
April 1888: Clotilde marries Wilhelm, King of Bohemia (see further under Adler, Irene).


	6. The Second Stain: The Unfair Sex

Watson believed "the most lovely woman in London"; I did not. A Duke's daughter and a cabinet minster's wife could not conceivably be so innocent about politics. Lady Hilda had been about to run off with Eduardo Lucas, taking the letter as her dowry, when his wife intervened. Yet I held my tongue rather than destroy Trelawney Hope's marriage myself.


	7. The Resident Patient: The Best of the Yarders

I have high hopes of Inspector Lanner: it is always agreeable to be greeted with delight rather than scepticism by a Scotland Yard officer. Despite his failure to recognise the murder as such, he was also prompt in following my suggestion of tracing the page. I feel he will go much further in his career than a blunderer like Lestrade.


	8. The Reigate Squires: Country Matters & The Bachelor Establishment

**Country Matters**

"My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class" – Sherlock Holmes, _The Greek Interpreter_

One should never underestimate the ruthlessness of the country squire: a family does not hold onto their property from the days of Good Queen Anne by being saintly. Determination combined with a certain flair for the underhand are the more common characteristics of that class. My class, I should say, for I too come from those outwardly respectable English shires.

**The Bachelor Establishment**

Watson told me that Colonel Hayter's establishment was a bachelor one. I think he presumed I worried lest my odd habits might disturb any ladies present. But in truth it is at times when my intellect is weary that carnal urges fall most heavily upon me. I wanted no women around as temptation in my distressing state of mental weakness.


	9. A Scandal in Bohemia: The Motives of Women Are So Inscrutable

"The motives of women are so inscrutable" - Sherlock Holmes in _The Second Stain_

A woman may be clever: that does not make her behaviour logical. I attended Irene Adler's wedding incognito; I deduced the location of the hidden panel at Briony Lodge. Admittedly, once she suspected her mistake, the woman thwarted me most effectively. But I still cannot understand how Irene Adler could love both Mr Godfrey Norton and the King of Bohemia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several friends of mine have always reckoned that there's more to this case than meets the eye. I gave one possible solution to Irene Adler's behaviour in my ACD/BBC crossover story [The Eternal Woman](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446327).


	10. The Man with the Twisted Lip: Other Men's Wives

Isa Whitney's wife sought frantically after her drug-enslaved husband. I did not doubt that Mrs St. Clair would remain loyal to a man who had lied to her for years. Yet my boy Watson granted me only a night's companionship and a shared breakfast before abandoning me again. For my secret is an affection more shameful than any ordinary man's. 


	11. The Five Orange Pips: The Detective's Dilemma

In truth, it was not hurt pride that I felt at John Openshaw's murder, but guilt. My remaining in London was essential that wild September night, but I should have sent Dr Watson to accompany Openshaw on his return journey. Had I but done that, I might have saved the young man...or imperilled the life of my truest friend.


	12. A Case of Identity: Another Norbury

Watson records my triumph in the Sutherland case; I now acknowledge my own failure. I may have frightened that scoundrel Windibank, but by keeping silent, I aided his plan to keep Miss Sutherland a spinster. If only I had realised then how long a noble heart may remain constant towards their beloved despite possessing no expectation of a favourable outcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a reference to "The Adventure of the Yellow Face".


	13. The Red-Headed League: Every Breath He Takes

We waited seventy-three minutes in the City and Suburban for John Clay that night. Seventy-three minutes in the dark, hearing the calm steadiness of Watson's breath, easily distinguishable from Jones' heavy inhales and the lightness of Mr Merryweather's respiration. As usual, my friend's mind could not follow my own, but his heart and his revolver were again at my command.


	14. The Dying Detective: The Lying Detective

I had no choice but to lie to Watson in order to trap Culverton Smith; he has no talent for dissimulation. I, however, possess such a talent. And so it is that I lie to my dearest friend constantly by omission, for when I beg him, "As you love me," I do not add "as I most surely love you".


	15. The Blue Carbuncle: A Story for Which the World is Now Ready

Five Christmases after the notorious Morcar jewel theft, I saw John Horner for the first time, when I attended – in disguise – the plumbers' annual ball. From the cut of his waistcoat, the years had seen his fortunes improve. James Ryder, however, died a broken man in '91, and so the true story of the Blue Carbuncle can now be revealed.


	16. The Valley of Fear: Detectives Near and Far

Even the best of London and provincial police officers have severe limitations. Give Mr Mac and his friend White Mason a trail to follow and they will follow it doggedly. But point out the problems with their solution and they will pooh-pooh them. Their minds run on fixed tracks and cannot be derailed even by the most striking of clues.

***

As for American detectives, judging by Birdy Edwards' account, there is little of detection in their job. "John McMurdo" revealed his flair for dissimulation, cool nerve and handiness in a fight, but nothing of the science of deduction. I have been invited to America several times, but there is surely no place for a Sherlock Holmes in the United States.


	17. The Yellow Face: The Red Face

I have often teased Watson for his deductive mistakes; perhaps it is right that he should have his revenge and display my own fallibility to the world. Mistaking a woman's motives, of course, as I have done on other occasions. The good doctor sees nothing but an angel in every beautiful woman; on this occasion, he was – unlike me – correct.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watson doesn't actually tell us about Effie Munro's looks, but since almost all Conan Doyle's heroines are beautiful, I'm assuming she was as well.


	18. The Greek Interpreter: The Medea of "The Myrtles"

"So was Sophy Kratides in the plot from the start?" Mycroft asked when I told him the Buda-Pesth news.

"No. Her shock at her brother's captivity was surely genuine."

"But her change from victim to fury–"

"Predictable. She had imagined Latimer's desire was for herself alone; his obsession with her fortune was an insult that had to be avenged."


	19. The Sign of Four: The Crimes of the Morstans & Thorn in the Flesh

**The Crime of the Morstans**

"I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money" _The Sign of Four_ , Chapter 2.

Miss Morstan was not a poisoner and yet she was that most dangerous of criminals - a thief. I knew long before I observed Watson and her holding hands that she had robbed me of him. Her triumph was surely inevitable; she could give Watson the love that I could not offer without being branded the most degenerate of criminals. 

***

**Thorn in the Flesh**

I had one spine from Tonga's pouch remaining when I finished my toxicological analysis. Culverton Smith's old trick-box still sat on my mantle; place the thorn at its trigger and the opener's death would be swift and certain. An engagement present for Miss Morstan? A solution more final than cocaine? But instead I returned the hidden treasure to Jonathan Small.


	20. The Hound of the Baskervilles: Headonism, Smokescreen & Artistic Licence

**Headonism**

It is not the shape of a man's skull that matters, as Mr Mortimer assumes, but its contents. Dr Watson has a fine head, judging by appearances, yet he repeatedly comes to the most erroneous conclusions. Still, despite his mental limitations, there is no man worth more at your side in a tight place, as he proved again on Dartmoor.

***

**Smokescreen**

"You use me and yet do not trust me!" - _Hound of the Baskervilles_ , Chapter 12

I trust my dear Watson's loyalty, but not always his sagacity. He hides in the dark spying on Barrymore without realising that the man might have smelt his cigarette; he drops a distinctive stub by my lair while hurrying to entrap the stranger on the tor. If only smoking were the stimulation to his brain that it is to mine.

***

**Artistic Licence**

"For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he [Holmes] was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas" – _Hound of the Baskervilles_ , Chapter 5

When Watson complains that my notions of art are crude, he means only that they are unconventional. To him, a painter who manipulates the viewer's sentiments with a saccharine picture of a faithful dog or an innocent bride is the supreme artist. But it is the pure colour theory of chromoluminarism and pointillism that appeals to my own scientific mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artistic movements of [chronoluminarism/divisionism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisionism) and [pointillism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism) were developed in France in the 1880s and rapidly spread to [Belgium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Van_Rysselberghe). Since _Hound_ is set in 1888 or 1889, it may be slight artistic licence to imagine such paintings had already reached a fashionable London gallery.


	21. The Copper Beeches: Dr Holmes

I would not wish a sister of mine to take up the position offered at The Copper Beeches, but what occupation would be suited to such a hypothetical maiden if she possessed the same analytical mind and unsocial temperament as myself and Mycroft? Hardly headmistress material, like Miss Hunter. Yet I believe lady doctors now exist: perhaps that might suit.


	22. The Boscombe Valley Mystery: The Inheritance

What would the eugenicist say about the pairing that our silence enabled? The son of a blackmailer married to the daughter of a murderer: surely both came from cursed stock. Yet Watson rightly described Miss Taylor as a lovely young woman, and McCarthy junior, though dull of mind, was sound of body. Perhaps their offspring might yet avoid hereditary taint.


	23. The Stockbroker's Clerk: Insider Dealing

I misled Watson, of course: a third person was involved in the Mawson crime, though his part was a minor one. How had the Beddingtons known of Pycroft's appointment and the address of his diggings if they did not have an inside man at the firm? I dropped them a line in warning; doubtless they dealt with the matter confidentially.


	24. The Naval Treaty: The Underlying Problem

'The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of "The Adventure of the Second Stain," "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty," and "The Adventure of the Tired Captain" ' - _The Naval Treaty_

To lose one top-secret document in a month is unfortunate; to lose two argues for Her Majesty's government as rotten from top to bottom. In each case the criminal had gained access to the material via his connections to the document-holder's wife. Perhaps I _should_ suggest to Mycroft that the upper reaches of Whitehall be recruited exclusively from sexual inverts.


	25. The Cardboard Box: The Bodies in Question

Watson claims to avoid sensationalism; it is more accurate to say he is anxious to avoid offending the sensibilities of the middle classes. Browner's murders were the third case of mine involving severed body parts; it was the first in which the missing appendages were such as could be recorded within a tale destined to be read in drawing rooms.


	26. The Engineer's Thumb:  The Sunk Cost Fallacy

"I thought of my fifty-guinea fee, of my wearisome journey, and of the unpleasant night which seemed to be before me. Was it all to go for nothing? Why should I slink away without having carried out my commission, and without the payment which was my due?" - _The Engineer's Thumb_

Mr Hatherley was asked to carry out a secret task by a man he found repulsive and offered a suspiciously munificent sum for this work. Yet he still took the commission and refused to heed any warning. What quirk of the mind allows a man to solve complex calculations concerning hydraulics and yet be incapable of observing the wider problem?


	27. The Crooked Man:  A Nathan Come to Judgement

The crooked man was not Henry Wood, of course, but James Barclay. But was there also a crooked woman? Major Murphy himself admitted to the Colonel's capacity for "violence and vindictiveness". And what may a wife not learn of her husband's character in thirty years of marriage? For Nancy Barclay, was her husband's true sin that of being found out?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title refers to 2 Samuel 12.


	28. Wisteria Lodge: The Effects of Civilization & A Queer Business

**The Effects of Civilization**

The mulatto was a savage and his appearance and practices grotesque, yet the real horror in this case was Don Murillo. The Tiger of San Pedro was notorious throughout Latin America for his cruelty, but my later investigations confirmed that he was of pure Spanish descent. The white race may be civilized, yet they are not thereby necessarily made good. 

***

**A Queer Business**

Fortunately, Baynes' astuteness did not put together a few trifling facts about John Scott Eccles. This 'sociable bachelor' described how a 'good-looking' young man had 'taken a fancy' to him immediately. Nor was Eccles alarmed when Garcia came to his room by night. Had Garcia's attempt at a fraudulent alibi failed, blackmail would doubtless have been used to obtain one.


	29. Silver Blaze: Notes on the Prerequisites for Deductive Success

The ideal investigator must possess the ability to ascertain facts correctly, in order to provide a solid base on which to erect his theories. He also needs the imagination to search for those facts which his hypotheses imply, followed by the discipline to discard any theories which later discoveries contradict. Above all, however, he requires Watson as a sounding board.


	30. The Beryl Coronet: Cherchez la femme

When a beautiful orphan remains unmarried for five years, the most likely problem is a lack of fortune. Yet Mary Holder refused to marry her cousin, despite his fine prospects. Surely one should hypothesise the existence of another beau, who sought hard cash as well as Miss Holder's love. And who might that suitor plausibly be but Sir George Burnwell?


End file.
